


burning bright, never to part

by saturnring



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Pain, but it is there, it's blink and you miss it, murphamy is there, the characters are there in his mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:00:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24900472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturnring/pseuds/saturnring
Summary: Murphy should yell, he knows that.But somehow, lying here in a pool of his own blood, he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around why.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/John Murphy
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	burning bright, never to part

**Author's Note:**

> So this happened. Sorry? Existential crises at 3 a.m. leads to philosophical contemplation.

Murphy should yell, he knows that.

But somehow, lying here in a pool of his own blood, he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around _why_.

Faint noise made its way from camp over to his impromptu nap spot, the sound of joy and excitement as Monty’s moonshine made even the stiffest of the Arkadians have a good time. It was a new recipe, the moonshine, made especially for the Coalition. No more war with the Grounders, no more Mount Weather, no more Jaha. It just was. For the first time since reaching the ground, everyone was reunited without the threat of death hanging over their heads.

Which is why it fucking sucked that apparently some Grounders hadn’t gotten the message that they were supposed to stop murdering each other.

Huh, Murphy guessed, he was murdered. Lying here on the ground with a spear in his stomach, unable to feel his legs, blood in his mouth, _he was murdered._ And for some reason, that was just the funniest shit in the world.

It started quiet, a small giggle passing his lips. Seconds later, he was full out wheezing, laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes. There were other reasons for them too.

Murphy gasped as the movement caused the spear to shift. He could feel it tearing up his insides, ripping him to shreds in the way nothing on Earth had managed yet. It sobered his laughter, leaving deafening silence in its wake. He couldn’t hear the music anymore, the celebrating voices nothing more than a memory. The only thing he could focus on was the shaft of the spear, still upright and blocking his view of the night sky.

Suddenly, with no real thought for what he was doing, Murphy grabbed the spear and pulled it out. The pain tore through his upper body and he let out another silent shriek. He couldn’t feel anything below it.

Dropping the spear somewhere off to the side, Murphy contemplated what to do next. Survival was out of the option. Somewhere in the back of his mind, someone was yelling at him for taking out the spear. He thinks it was his past self, the him before they reached the ground. Back when he was a child, back when he was an arsonist, back when he was in Lockup. The him who was hung, the one who tried to kill Charlotte, the one who shot Raven. The one who would do anything and kill anyone to survive, the cockroach.

Murphy paused to think about that. Was he still that same person? He didn’t think so. The old him would have left the spear in and crawled back to camp, demanded someone save him. Now, lying here on a cool bed of grass surrounded by ancient trees and a vast starry sky? All he wanted to do was stay there until the Earth claimed him.

Back on the Ark, those who were religious would sometimes hold sermons in the Lockup commons. Murphy never went to one, never saw the point when he was pretty much destined to go to Hell in any religion out there. Why would he spend his free hour being told that his soul was damned?

But one evening, the guards locked them in the commons. They said they had a meeting, but Murphy could smell the pot on them when they came back two hours later. Just his luck, the religious nuts had taken it upon themselves to ‘educate them on the cycle of the soul’. He had managed to tune them out, sitting in a corner with Atom and Mbege, and he had missed all of it except the end.

According to them, when you die, your soul becomes a star. You shine bright in the sky, guiding the next generation on their safe passage. Murphy had hoped that he would become a black hole, destroying Lockup and the Ark and the entire damn solar system.

Now, Murphy wondered. Would he become a star? Would the others look up into the sky and see him up there? Or would he be too far away for them to see? It would be just his luck for whatever higher power that was out there to punt him halfway across the universe, alone and burning fiery as he had been in life.

Maybe it would be better to stay here on Earth. Not alive, no, he’d been shown that he failed at that several times now, but just as a presence. Walking with Clarke and Bellamy to Polis. Joining the hunting groups as they trekked through the woods. Standing alone in that field of glowing butterflies from their first night, unable to scare them off because he didn’t exist. He could wander the world, passing oceans and continents until he found a place he belonged.

Murphy decided that that was what was going to happen. Humans weren’t meant for the sky. Recycled oxygen and reclaimed water kept them alive. They lived in a giant hunk of metal, uncaring and never alive. Earth was where humans were meant to be, rushing rivers and towering trees and a distinct feeling of _aliveness_ that never left, no matter where you went. It was only fitting that the universe was setting the balance right, returning him from space to his proper place on the ground. Hungry animals would eat him, trees would engulf him, rain would wash away his bones. He’d be returned to his right place, the never ending cycle of life.

Murphy knew the end was close. He could hear again, louder this time. He knew that no one was coming for him. The band played on, beats of a makeshift drum slightly offset by his slowing pulse. Maybe he was delirious. Maybe he was finally sane.

All he knew was the soft green grass under him, cushioning his head and absorbing the blood. The inky black sky above him littered with twinkling stars, all twisting and blurring around the pale moon. The dark trees above him, dappled with light from the stars whose light had traveled light years to make his last night a lonely ballroom.

He gave a shuddering breath, the action harder than it had been minutes ago. He couldn’t feel anything now. It was the first time in a long time. Was this how Raven felt when he shot her?

Probably not. She was a good person, unlike him. Sure, she had killed those Grounders with her little trick with the rocket fuel. But she had good reason for it. It was a shame, he thought, that he had never really said sorry. He really was though. He wishes he could.

His thoughts drift to Bellamy, as they tended to do. He still hadn’t quite forgiven him for the hanging. Murphy had thought they were friends, had childish hopes that they could maybe be more. But then Bellamy had left him to hang, to die surrounded by a mob led by the man he might have loved. But lying there in the grass, he really couldn’t give less of a fuck about it. Bellamy hung him, he hung Bellamy, they had tension, nothing really changed. Murphy wishes he could sit next to him one more time.

Of course, with Bellamy came Clarke. Those two were a package deal. He still held most of his original thoughts. Stuck up, bitchy, air of superiority. Still, she had convinced Bellamy not to kill him after he came back from his banishment. Damn, he never really said sorry about that either. There were a lot of apologies that he wished he had said. He wishes he could thank her, even if her trust had been misplaced.

There were others. Monty and Jasper, another two connected at the hip. He liked Monty, he never treated him like a criminal after he wanted to kill his friend. He wasn’t sure what was up with that Jasper kid. He had been happy-go-lucky but something had happened at Mount Weather, something about a girl. Poor kid was never the same. The others blended into one endless story, Miller Octavia Finn WellsHarperCharlotteMbegeConnor. He couldn’t pick out the names, couldn’t untangle their story from his and apologize for whatever he had done to them. Because he had certainly done something.

The trees were silent, no chirping insects or prowling cats. Maybe someone will have noticed his absence by then, he had only meant to go grab some joba nuts for Monty’s experimental moonshine batch. It didn’t matter, he supposed. His lungs struggled to take in air and the slow and unsteady beat of his heart counted his seconds down. He would die here alone. Only his body would be discovered, his soul either lost in the sky or roaming the Earth. And in that moment he found, he really didn’t care that he was dying alone.

He had told Raven once, back when they were on the dropship and she was bleeding out and they thought the Ark was dead, that he didn’t want to die alone. But now that he was here, he realized that he wasn’t alone. He wasn’t being floated into the dead sky, he was surrounded by life, life that had no cares for what he had done. The bat flying above him didn’t know that he had caused Charlotte's death. The squirrel in that tree didn’t care that he had shot Raven. He could scream his crimes to the world and nothing would change. The rain would fall, the Sun would rise and set, predator would still hunt prey.

So he wasn’t alone. His eyes were out of focus now, and try as he might, he couldn’t get the leaves and stars to stop blurring together. But it was okay. He was done. What was it that the Grounders said? Yu gonplei ste odon? Yeah, that. May we meet again, your fight is over, it was all the same. They were all the same. And as he drew his last rattling breath, Murphy couldn’t help but think that all he was, all anybody was, was a small star in an infinite universe, burning and burning until they were gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment! I don’t know that this was, but it’s here and published and on the Internet forever.


End file.
